He also called the Paris terrorist attacks “un complot,” or conspiracy, and launched into a lengthy explanation of the “magical Jews” behind it. They were not ordinary Jews, he said, but a “hybrid race of shape shifters” who have extraordinary abilities. “They know how to get in everywhere,” he said. “They are master manipulators.”

Oh, those wacky Jews! I wish I had their cool powers!

Bearing in mind that this Great Thinker is also a self-confessed drug-dealer,we might be inclined to write his theory off as the ravings of a nut-job. And, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’s been sampling his own wares a bit too much.

However, it’s also true that Arab Islamic society loves conspiracy theories, since it lets the believer take the role of the victim and avoid facing the real pathologies (self-)afflicting his or her world. For example, did you know Jews can cause earthquakes, or that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are works of science? And this is not a recent development: Jew-hatred is common in the Qur’an, Islam’s foundational text. As the late Sheikh Tantawi, former Grand Mufti of Egypt and head of al-Azhar university (in other words, a deep scholar of Islam) wrote:

[The] Qur’an describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah, corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness…only a minority of the Jews keep their word….[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims, the bad ones do not. (Qur’an 3:113)

You can read the rest in a long, but worthwhile dissertation on Islamic antisemitism here, or just buy the book. With thousands of years of tradition and orthodox theology lending their approval, is it any wonder it’s so easy to blame the Jews for anything, no matter how nutty?

Even when killers shout “Allahu akbar!” and “We have avenged The Prophet!” or train with al-Qaeda in Yemen.

PS: Yes, I know we have our own conspiracy nuts. Try searching “fire can’t melt steel” sometime. But, thankfully, these freaks are far less common here, though still dang annoying. In the Arab Islamic societies of the Middle East, on the other hand…

We’ve long known of the Muslim world’s fetish for conspiracy theories, but this one is a real gem. On an Egyptian television show last November, Jamal al-Din Ibrahim (1) claimed that the Islamic State was a creation of John McCain and that its leader, the “Caliph” Abu-Bakar al-Baghdadi, was trained by Mossad. And, if that wasn’t enough, he involved British Intelligence (an old bugbear among Middle Eastern conspiracy fans) and American traitor Edward Snowden.

Professor or not, Mr. al-Din is an expert in nuttiness:

Here’s an excerpt from the transcript:

Jamal Al-Din Ibrahim: ISIS has two meaning – an over meaning and the true meaning. On the face of it, ISIS means “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.”

Jamal Al-Din Ibrahim: Exactly. He said that this was a means to drag the Arab world into a quagmire, and at the same time, to get rid of all the terrorists in a clever way, in keeping with the ways of British intelligence.

…and…

This is a picture of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, right? That’s his picture with John McCain, right?

Interviewer: Exactly. Oh my!

Jamal Al-Din Ibrahim: And that’s his picture with various Arab organizations… Isn’t that his assistant, Muhammad Noor?

Interviewer: Yes, on the right.

Jamal Al-Din Ibrahim: Show us the previous picture again. There’s something fishy there. That’s his meeting with John McCain.

Interviewer: Yes, from about two years ago.

Jamal Al-Din Ibrahim: The guy with the camera is [Baghdadi’s] assistant, Muhammad Noor.

Interviewer: Right.

Jamal Al-Din Ibrahim: This proves that John McCain was establishing ISIS two years ago, when the Syrian revolution started. That’s him over there. ISIS leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi…

There are many annoying things about Senator McCain, but, somehow, I don’t think establishing a head-chopping Islamic revival movement is among them.

Sadly, this kind of thinking is all too common in the Muslim world, which wallows in a blame-others victim-hood.

Footnote:
(1) Who claims to be a former University of California. If so, it was probably at Irvine, where the anti-Israel and antisemitic craziness is strong.

Last week, marked the gruesome and bloody spectacle which punctuates the annual Shiite Muslim celebration of Ashura (the 10th day of the month of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar). This date serves as a memorialfor slain Shiite leader Hussein bin Ali, executed by order of Sunni Caliph Yazid bin Muawiyah in 680 C.E. Following his decapitation, Hussein’s head was brought to Damascus, the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate of Yazid and displayed for a month, culminating (temporarily) a furious period of internecine strife in early Islamic history, whose sanguinary and brutal sectarian legacy is still manifest today, most notably in Syria, and Iraq.

While such narrative accounts of Sunni-Shiite sectarian strife are routinely shared by non-Muslim pundits, these expertsneverreveal its dark theological underpinning: Islam’s most bitter and lasting internecine struggle is yet another “Jewish conspiracy.” As put forth in seminal early Muslim historiography (for example, by Tabari, d. 923), Abd Allah b. Saba, an alleged renegade Yemenite Jew is claimed to be the founder of the heterodox Shiite sect. He is held responsible—identified as a Jew—for promoting the Shiite heresy and fomenting the rebellion and internal strife associated with this primary breach in Islam’s “political innocence,” culminating in the assassination of the third Rightly Guided Caliph Uthman, and the bitter, lasting legacy of Sunni-Shi’ite sectarian strife.

This should also serve as a corrective to those who think Jew-hatred was an import from the Nazis, a sickness that infected the Religion of Tolerance in the 1930s and 1940s. Far from it. Antisemitism is homegrown in Islam, and the alliance with the Nazis was a case of mutual recognition and simpatico.

Really, the myth that the Court somehow stole the election is getting up there with 9/11 Trutherism and Kennedy conspiracy theories. Tim Carney, commenting on a Dana Milbank article in The Washington Post that claims the Court denied Joe Lieberman the vice-presidency, sets the record straight:

But the Supreme Court didn’t deny Lieberman Florida. The voters of Florida did.

How do I know?

Because of the media recounts after the election.

If SCOTUS had never taken up the case, or had let the Florida Supreme Court ruing stand, we would have had a statewide recount of all undervotes — and Bush would have won, according to the media recounts.

If Gore had gotten what he was asking for, a hand recount in four counties, Bush still would have won, according to the media recounts.

Some liberals hang their hat on a third, imaginary recount of all ballots, including overvotes. About that imaginary recount (1) it would have been illegal, (2) Gore probably would have opposed it, and (3) which no court had ordered. And even so, only maybe would it have given the election to Gore.

Really, people. Get over it. Gore lost, and he lost because he couldn’t carry even his home state.

Whoever does not believe me can look at The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This is no book of poetry or stories. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a matter of undisputable science.

There was a meeting of the Freemasons in France, and a French woman managed to smuggle out some dangerous documents, which circulated in the meeting.

Between 1897 and 1951, the secret Zionist groups held nearly 23 meetings, one of which was a large gathering, which included over 50 Zionist groups. They issued several documents: How can we gain control over the world’s minds? How can we gain control of the media? How can we turn the mighty national armies into cantons, which will fight one another? How can we gain control over the flow of capital? How can we gain control over the presidents and state leaders, and turn them into collaborators?

A French woman managed to smuggle out these documents, which serve as the backbone of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

And the rest, as they was, was history. A fruit-loopy, conspiracy-mongering history straight from the persecution complexes of minds that can’t handle the modern world, but still a form of history.

According to this site, al-Nas TV is an Islamic religious channel specializing in programming for muftis, scholars who interpret Islamic law. In other words, important cultural and spiritual leaders for significant portions of Egypt’s population. And this is what those “scholars” are learning.

Following on from the questions asked earlier, one has to wonder just how Israel is supposed to negotiate and make genuine peace with a society suffering from cultural paranoid psychosis?

Somehow, I think the question answers itself.

RELATED: The real history of the Protocols is that they were written around 1905 by a Russian mystic who plagiarized a French satirical work that itself never mentioned Jews. He just added them to “prove” Jews were out to control the world. You can read all about it at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s site. Sadly, like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the Protocols is very popular in the Muslim Middle East.

A few days ago, on the floor of the House, Representative Lee (D-CA) declared that requiring voters to present identification in order to vote was a… wait for it… racist plot!!!

A Democratic lawmaker said Wednesday on the House floor that Republican legislators around the country are purposefully trying to deny blacks the right to vote by pushing for voter identification laws.

“It’s no coincidence that a disproportionate number of these affected voters come from communities of color as well as the poor, the elderly and students,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

“Having been born and raised in Texas, this certainly looks like a poll tax to me, which those of us remember as a way to prevent African Americans from voting. These voter ID laws have a partisan agenda: seeking to disenfranchise and deny specific populations of voters before they have the opportunity to elect their representatives in government.”

She also said the laws are meant to change election outcomes by “turning the clock back to the days of Jim Crow.”

Pardon me, I need to beat my head against a wall for a moment.

There. I feel better.

If you think you’ve heard this song before, you’re right. Just a few days ago, a Democratic Party support organization masquerading as a civil rights advocacy group, the NAACP, announced plans to ask the United Nations to intervene against the racist evils of voter ID laws.

And, let’s not forget, the Chairwoman of the Democratic Party, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, accused Republicans of wanting to take America back to the days of Jim Crow. It seems Congresswoman Lee needs the same history lesson about her own party I gave Wasserman-Schultz:

Q. Which party defended slavery? A. The Democratic Party.

Q. Which party opposed slavery? A. The Republican Party.

Q. Between 1875 and 1964, which party passed every major civil rights bill until the 1964 act? A. The Republicans.

Q. Which party created and defended Jim Crow for over 90 years? A. The Democrats.

Q. Which party fought every anti-lynching law introduced between the Civil War and 1964? A. The Democrats.

Q. Which party introduced segregation into the federal government? A. The Democrats, under Wilson.

Of course, truth doesn’t matter to the Lees and the NAACPs and the Wasserman-Schultzes of the world. In fact the truth is their enemy. If they ran on the truth, that election fraud is a real problem, they would have to admit that their party is the one that benefits from it. And if they ran in the next election on the truth of the Democrats’ record while in office… Well, it would make the Great Shellacking of 2010 look like a day at the beach by comparison.

Hence they’re left with nothing but the Big Lie, told often and loud and with total sincerity. As an expert (1) in the tactic once said:

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

But, back to Representative Lee and the question I put to you in the subject, the answer is “c) both.” She knows what she’s doing, playing the race card in an attempt to intimidate Republicans and scare Blacks and other minorities into voting Democrat, and, let’s be blunt, keep the door open for vote fraud. It’s part of a concerted Democratic strategy (2), which we’ll see played again and again between now and November, 2012.

But she’s also an idiot, because she apparently thinks stirring up ethnic animosities somehow helps the nation or even her constituents. Far from it. Every time they tell this Big Lie, they harm their country, their party, their constituents, and themselves.

RELATED: It probably won’t surprise you to know that Representative Lee is, at least through 2009, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Here’s a little background on her.

Footnotes:
(1) Yeah, I went there. I’m not accusing Lee of being a Nazi, of course, but she seems awfully willing to use the totalitarians’ tactics.
(2) The other Big Lie, of course, is the class warfare card, which Obama made a cornerstone of his campaign in his openly Socialist speech last week in Osawatomie. That’s the only strategy the Democrats have left: scream and call names and hope no one notices their intellectual bankruptcy.

I will disagree with him, however, that Obama’s education should be dropped. Not that I doubt the president’s education and want proof he really graduated, but I think it’s important to understanding him that we know what he studied and under whom. Who influenced him during his formative college years? Even though he now (for once in his life) has a public track record, a clearer understanding of his college days would prove useful.